While Barb and Tod were here for Thanksgiving, they took Harper to the Children’s Museum while I stayed home with Finn. She always loves it there and it’s a great way to burn some energy. I’m so glad Tod took all these pictures so I can see how much fun she had.

There’s an outdoor climbing structure that she’d never really climbed on before.

It’s pretty high up, so I was quite impressed to hear she made it all the way to the top! I love the thumbs up she gives them when she makes it to the top.

There’s also this cylinder that blows scarves and I’d never seen it before. These pictures make me laugh at how excited she gets feeling the scarves land on her face. Pure joy.

During Finn’s 9th month he still struggled with sickness and allergies which wreaked havoc on his sleep at night. Lots of congestion and coughing would wake him up many times a night. Allergies in the winter in Texas are no joke. They hit Drew hard, and we’re learning that they hit Finn hard too. He also got two more teeth, which weren’t fun either. And he sure likes to grind them together!

But in between all the not-so-fun stuff, Finn learned to wave, which is adorable. He eats any puree I feed him, but isn’t into finger foods just yet. He is very close to crawling – he’ll move any which way except forward. He likes to lunge from sitting to his belly to reach something, turn in circles, scoot backwards, and then whine for help. He can push back up to sitting and pull up to his knees. He sleeps on his belly about half the time now.

He chats a lot and grunts to say hi. He also likes to smack his lips, blow raspberries, give a big toothy wide grin and slap his belly when he’s excited (I guess it’s his form of clapping.) And when he’s not moving and grooving, he’s the sweetest little cuddler.

This month he celebrated his first Thanksgiving with a visit from Gram and Toddy (who took some of these pictures.)

He had fun helping us decorate for Christmas.

He also had his first sink bath and was as excited about it as Harper was at that age.

She was disappointed that her alphabet puzzle didn’t come with enough R’s.

She calls Barnes and Noble “Barnes in Oble.”

I asked Harper to hand me something while I was holding Finn and she said (with nothing in her hands), “I can’t. My hands are full.” She then immediately turned to grab the two closest things on the couch – a remote and burp cloth – and held them up to show me.

Mommy: “Exercise is good for our bodies and so are fruits and vegetables and vitamins.”
Harper: “And candy?”
Mommy: “No, candy is not good for our bodies.”
Harper: “It’s good for my arm?”

Mommy: “Daddy’s stuck at work”
Harper: “Oh no! We have to help him!”

Mommy: “Your shirts are getting too small. We need to get you a bigger shirt.”
Harper: “I can just borrow Daddy’s shirts.”

We had mozzarella sticks one night and she asked if they were fish sticks. After correcting her, she still called them cheese fish sticks.

When she’s in a certain mood and you ask her what she did at school that day, she’ll huff and say “Ugh, nuffing.”

One day she was pretending to sleep in my bed and then she’d pop up and gasp, “It’s coronation day!” (A line from Frozen.)

At bedtime each night, after books and songs, she’ll say, “Stay and talk to me.” So Drew and I will both take turns lying with her and chatting. She’ll say, “Let’s talk about movies.” And it’s usually Rapunzel or Ariel and she wants to narrate the plot of the movie. Once in a while, she’ll say, “Let’s talk about Mother’s Day.” Recently, I overheard Drew explaining the plot of The Royal Tenenbaums and later he told me they agreed to take turns talking about each other’s movies.

“My allergies hurt. I have allergies in my mouth.”

She chased Maeby under the table and said, “She’s just a little grumpy.”

One the way to school:
Harper: Yawn “I’m tired.”
Mommy: “Why are you tired?”
Harper: “Because my tummy’s full of water.”
Mommy: “Oh.”
Harper: “And milk.”

At dinner one night, I paused to clap for Finn to engage him while we were eating and she said to me, “Hey! Eat your dinner!”

When Drew asked her to do something, she said, “Just a second. You have to be patient, Dad.”

She was playing around and put her lovie in her shirt and said she was having a baby girl named Lois.

She calls us sweetie all the time – sometimes in order to get herself out of trouble. Like, if we asked her many times to pick something up she’ll say, “Just in a second, sweetie” or “Maybe tomorrow, sweetie” or if Drew misplaces his phone she’ll find it and say, “There’s your phone, sweetie.”

She hasn’t caught on that you need to say the word “done” after “almost” so she’ll say, “I’m almost eating.” or “I’m almost watching my movie.”

At school, they are apparently told not to lean back on the legs of their chairs, so she will not allow Drew to do it at the dinner table. She’ll say, “Feet on the floor, Daddy.” So any time Drew starts to stretch back, she’ll look down on the floor to make sure the legs of his chair are flat and she’ll say, “I’m checking you! Ok, you’re just stretching.”

We went out on the patio to look at the Christmas lights hung on our pergola and she said, “It’s magical!”

Before I began recording this video, I had said, “Guess what? Gram and Toddy are coming next week!” And she yelled, “YAY!!!!” I wanted to get her excitement on video, so I told her to do it again and this is what I got:

Month 8 was a rough one for Finn and for the whole family. Like I said before, between Halloween and Thanksgiving, we were sick as dogs. And I had to work a few overnights and Saturdays. Then Drew injured his back and has been out of commission off and on for the past few weeks. To top it off, Finn was also cutting his top teeth. So, yeah, it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t get too many pictures this month since it was a haze (and some I did get were too snotty), so I’m throwing in a few cell phone snaps now that I have a better phone.

His top left tooth poked through towards the end of the month. Because of teething and sickness, Finn woke up many times a night pretty much the whole month. Sometimes hourly. He even had goop coming out of his eyes. Doctor said it was just a cold (while we were there, he weighed in at 19 lbs.)

He’s been much happier playing on his belly now. He likes to push up with his arms and spin in circles, but no crawling yet. He’s also really into standing at his activity table (with me sitting very close by since he tends to tumble.) He’s a cuddle muffin and has learned that he can get anything he wants if he bats his eyelashes at us and grins his big smile at us!

And just in case you’re wondering if these monthly pictures are always smiles…I take a lot of pictures that look like this:

I realize I’m pretty late to the game on this post, but for good reason! Actually bad reasons – we’ve been plagued with a lot of sickness the last 5 or so weeks, mixed with lots of working overtime, lots of exhaustion, teething, work travel, back injury, you name it.

But we were determined to enjoy Halloween! We started with our annual tradition of painting mini pumpkins and carving a big pumpkin. Otherwise known as: everyone loses interest so I carve the pumpkin myself. At least this year we learned that you can’t put a carved pumpkin outside in this heat or it melts. So it stayed inside and rotted. Maybe next time we’ll just paint pumpkins…

Harper had a fall festival at school and dressed in her favorite Rapunzel dress and had lots of fun making crafts and playing with her friends.

We were in the thick of all the exhaustion and sickness right around Halloween. Finn had a bad cold, then I got a bad cold, then I had to work overnight the night before Halloween and the whole day of Halloween, right up to trick-or-treating time. So I was exhausted and practically lost my voice from all the coughing.

But the kids looked darn cute in their costumes and had a blast trick-or-treating with our neighbors!

Between naps and feedings and Finn feeling a little under weather, we had a small window of time last weekend to make a quick trip to pick up some pumpkins. I really just wanted to go so I could get pictures of the kids together. So during the twenty minutes we were there, fifteen of them were spent trying to get them to both look at the camera. Then we grabbed one big pumpkin to carve and four little pumpkins to paint and raced home.